Gore`s Son Out Of Hospital

April 27, 1989|By Richard Phillips.

He`s in a body cast from chest to right foot and left knee, but 6-year-old Albert Gore III finally has been discharged from Johns Hopkins

Children`s Hospital. Young Albert ran in front of a car outside Baltimore Memorial Stadium 24 days ago after attending the Orioles` opening-day game with his dad, Sen. Al Gore Jr. (D., Tenn.). He`s home now in Alexandria, Va., nursing the aftermath of a broken rib and thigh bone, a ruptured spleen, a bruised lung and a concussion. Doctors won`t remove the body cast for three weeks.

PREVIN LOSES A POWER FIGHT A sticky situation at the Los Angeles Philharmonic is over. Andre Previn, 60, wielder of a respected baton there since 1985, has announced his resignation with two years remaining on his contract. ``It has become obvious to me there is no room for a music director,`` said Previn, tired of feuding with CEO Ernest Fleischmann over everything from editing music to office supplies and coffee. Tribune music critic John von Rhein said the squeeze-play was apparent last November, when Fleischmann spread the word that Previn was available for Zubin Mehta`s soon-to-be-vacated seat at the New York Philharmonic. Previn, it seems, hadn`t known he was available.

WOLFGANG PUCK: YER OUT! It was a window of opportunity for predatory paparazzi, but now Wolfgang Puck has closed the shutters. Puck, whose trendy Spago restaurant in L.A. is a celebrity snack bar for supermarket tabloids, decided to ban photographers after fiesty paparazzi began elbowing waiters aside, most recently over Goldie Hawn and boyfriend Kurt Russell. Fearing an exodus of skittish customers, such as Joan Collins and Michael Caine, Puck hired two plainclothes guards as bouncers. Soon to come is a sheltered rear entrance for camera-shy patrons.

``I hope the photographers don`t come at all any more,`` said Puck. ``If it was up to me, they could all go to Nicky Blair`s.`` Speaking for the disinvited, photographer Scott Downie said: ``We can live without Spago. . . . But can Spago live without us?``

NO RIP FOR WOODY GUTHRIE Woody Guthrie has been dead 22 years, but a hometown battle to bury his reputation lives on. In Okemah, Okla., angry undertaker Bart Webb keeps erecting signs declaring ``Woody Guthrie Was No Hero.`` But somebody keeps tearing them down. Not surprisingly, Webb now is a rallying cry for a sizable number of Guthrie nonlovers in the town of 3,500. To them, the creator of

``This Land Is Your Land`` was a communist (or, nearly as bad, an atheist). Things may heat up even more with son Arlo`s arrival Saturday at Okemah`s Crystal Theater-his first concert ever in Woody`s hometown. ``They`re all mixed up,`` said theater owner Mark Smythe, recalling that Woody Guthrie and his father were close friends. ``The only reason Woody ever wrote for the Daily Worker is because they would print his thoughts and no one else would. He was for the common man, not communism.``

A CATTY REPLY TO JUNK MAIL What happens when you fill out the warranty card on that new appliance?

Ask Robert Perlstein of Atlanta, who sent in the name of his cat, Enemy, on the warranty card of a hair drier. ``All of a sudden, I started getting mail- to Enemy. The Anti-Defamation League, MasterCard. . . . `` Perlstein wasn`t surprised. He sells by direct mail, although the indiscriminate volume rankles him. ``You hear people say junk mail is an invasion of their privacy? They`re right.``

A LAWYER PAYS THE PRICE Divorce never is cheap, but sometimes justice tags along. In Macon, Ga., a judge ordered Alvin McDougald to pay client Bobby Wood $100,000 over a faulty divorce. Faulty? McDougald never filed the papers. Wood learned this after getting remarried.